Posted on July 14, 2008

Four tips on writing a serial novel

For a new writer, the problem is getting noticed. The amount of new fiction released each month, whether in book stores or blogs, is huge. Most of it is from people readers have never heard of and most of it is, sadly, terrible. For the new writer, then, the guy or gal toiling away over the keyboard without a waiting audience beyond close friends and immediate family, taking that initial crack at the market is a daunting task.

This is only exacerbated by the fact that writing is both lonely and front loaded. Penning a novel is not a social activity, nor is it quick. And, under the typical publishing regime, nearly all the work is done before the author has any sense of whether it will pay off.

I decided early on to serialize THE HOLE, though at the time I didn’t realize I was writing a novel. During the first month or so of writing, I imagined the story would run to 10,000 words or so, about thirty pages in paperback. Because the short story market is so limited for new authors and because my concern was not making money but finding readers, I had long ago opted to put all my short fiction online instead of sending it off to the various low circulation magazines.

And that’s when I discovered what I think is the true benefit to serializing for fresh authors. If you know you have a big advance waiting for you when you cross that second or third draft finish line, motivating yourself to crank out five-hundred or a thousand or two-thousand words nearly every day is easy. But when that’s not the case, when the only place your novel might end up is the echo chamber of unpublished manuscripts, spending a year or more writing the thing can be difficult. Serializing the first draft gives an immediate response. Assuming you can find a batch of readers (a topic I’ll discuss at length in upcoming posts—subscribe to my feed if you want to be notified as they’re available), you’ll get feedback and encouragement at every step of the way.

What’s more, that stable of regular readers creates an impression of obligation: If I don’t write regularly, those people waiting for new installments of the novel will get upset. Their attention will flag and they’ll wander off. I have to write to keep them happy.

Serializing a first draft has its share of gotchas, however. The biggest ones I encountered, in no particular order, are:

1) It’s risky. I’ve been told by a few people, one of them a best selling author, that serializing my novels as I write them is a mistake. Publishing houses, the theory goes, want exclusivity. They want to be the first guys to present a story to the world.  By writing the first draft in public, the big publishers—and most of the smaller ones—will automatically reject any subsequent drafts, no matter how revised.  This is a genuine concern.  I wouldn’t be happy with THE HOLE remaining a blog-only production.  I want to see it in print.  But there are publishers out there who are more willing to experiement with alternative models (my novel’s sponsor, Permuted Press, being one example) and that knowledge, along with a weighing of the benefits to serializing, convinced me to continue.  In all honesty, I don’t think my little horror novel would’ve been written were it not for the constant and cheerful reader feedback.  Or, if I had managed to bring it to completion, the process would have taken a great deal longer than a year and a half.  Still, the consequences of serializing a book need to be recognized, and anyone venturing along this particular path needs to be aware of what he may be giving up.

2) You’re not showing the world your best work. I suppose one could serialize a book by writing and revising it first and only then beginning the publishing schedule.  But, for me, this would defeat much of the purpose of serializing, which is the constant reader interaction during the writing process.  The result of posting as you write, however, is that your readers aren’t benefiting from the polish of a second or third draft.  They’re getting the raw output, complete with as many errors as you care to leave in.  Some of these can be addressed with effort, such as fixing typos, but others—continuity, character development, pacing, plot—are difficult to do anything with until the first draft is done.  This can lead to readers potentially being turned off by writing that’s not up to your best standards.  Again, it’s a risk.

3) You can’t fix major mistakes or change your mind about things. Early on in the book, I wrote one of my two main characters, Elliot Bishop, as something of an ass.  He lusted for Evajean Rhodes and was, in a sense, glad her husband had died, because it gave him the opportunity to make his move.  This felt right as I began writing, but it eventually became obvious to me—and many of my readers, based on their comments—that it was wrong for both the story and Elliot’s character.  Unfortunately, I’d already put those initial chapters out into the world.  Changing them would only confuse my readers.  Even more troublesome, though, was the issue of how the world in the novel ended.  Chapters near the start tell it one way, but, as the book drew to a close, I realized the plot would work better if I tweaked those events.  If I’d been writing only for myself, making these fixes would’ve been simple.  But having the text already out there, and having readers who likely weren’t inclined to go back and start over, limited my ability to bring the first half of the book in line with the second.  Still, this lack of revision capacity can be a benefit.  The only option I had in writing was to plunge ahead and finish the book.

4) There’s an obligation to finish. The first novel I made substantial progress on was called KARAOKE QUINTESSENCE. I wrote fifty-thousand words before deciding I wasn’t happy with where the book was headed and so I set it aside to work on THE HOLE (I will return to it as a new serial just as soon as the current novel is finished.) Because KQ was being written only for me (not even my then girlfriend, and now wife, was looking over my shoulder), I had the luxury of scrapping it when I realized it wasn’t going well. But if I’d written my way fifty-thousand words into a serial publication, with a couple hundred people or more subscribed to get every new update, the ease of calling it quits would have vanished. This isn’t necessarily bad, since it forces you to finish what you started, but it does take away a degree of flexibility.

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